Cities and spaces

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:59:30 GMT

Although called the footloose industry financial activities traditionally tend to concentrate in cities. Places such as New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong are among the latest ones in a long series of historic examples dating back to the big trading places of antiquity in Babylonia, Egypt and Phoenicia and, much later, the Italian fairs in Lucca, Genoa, Venice and Florence.

Financial activities are an important element of world cities, large urbanised regions with a high density of economic activity and flows of money, workers, commodities and information whose influence is stretching far beyond national boundaries. In contrast to widespread expectations, the rise of information technology seem to reinforce the tendency of financial agglomeration by creating unforeseen dependences on the built environment as well as a rising rather than declining need for personal contacts, information and expertise.

Beside fulfilling their function as providers of financial services financial centres have a strong symbolic dimension. They live on myths and create their own myths. In our imagination, they are crowded places, full of energy, where fabulous fortunes are made overnight, only to be destroyed by ruinous greed the next day, where skyscrapers signal might and power, and influential men and institutions decide the fate of the world.

Financial industry myths and city myths overlap. To a large extent the attractiveness of financial centres is determined by social and cultural influences and by a general view of what makes a city. With the rise of huge non-financial agglomerations in many parts of the world city myth influences are becoming stronger and, at the same time, our imagination of cities is increasingly shaped by other, new concepts and ideas. On the other hand, perceptions of cities and places are also influenced by people spending an ever increasing amount of time in what Marc Augé in his influential little book has called non-places.

The links in this category are a rather eclectic compilation of contributions from many different sources approaching the question of what determines a financial centre and how cities and places are perceived from different angles.

The following are the latest examples I came upon in my twitter timeline.

Thinking Cities(made by Ericsson as part of their Networked Society series). This short film is about city research and urban projects showing how cities will drive global change. From the introduction: “Cities are the future, and innovations to make them better, smarter, and faster are happening every day.” (Co.Exist, Fast Company, PARS International Corp.)

Cities evoke emotions and memories. The following text is a good example:

Asia is probably the continent where currently the most impressive contrasts and most rapid city developments – with all positive and negative side effects – can be seen. Watch the following examples:

Video: China’s Ghost Cities (by SBS Dateline) “Vast cities are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost uninhabited ghost towns. It’s estimated there are 64 million empty apartments.“ h/t Franz Traussnig (@offwitz)

Video: The largest migration in history (The Economist) “Migration from inland villages to coastal cities has transformed China. Now that is changing, as regional cities inland become the new focus of migration patterns.”

Photos: Tokyo Gate Bridge or Dinosaur Bridge by Lee Chapman, “a long-term resident of Tokyo who arrived in 1998 for ‘a year or two’, and, for a plethora of reasons, stayed put”. He is running one of my favourite sites, Tokyo Times.

Technological innovations have the greatest success in business when they are entirely ‘client- focused’. Developments in the retail sector, which is consumer-led, are addressing client demand for more personalised, faster and more competitive services. Data Analytics is changing the way in which these services are offered. This trend is now being taken on board by multiple innovators such as academia, start-ups and technology companies.

Organized by Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT), Gabelli School of Business, Fordham University, and Global Research Unit (GRU), Department of Economics & Finance, City University of Hong Kong

Given the increasing success of the North American edition and the evident demand for conferences of this quality in accessible locations, the SFS is happy to announce its plans for an Asia-Pacific version of the Cavalcade. The SFS Cavalcade Asia-Pacific is a joint project of the Review of Financial Studies, the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, and the Review of Asset Pricing Studies. It will be a high-quality conference covering all areas of finance. The format is 55 minutes per paper with several concurrent parallel sessions. Our goal is to provide a setting that produces the kind of in-depth participation of a smaller conference while accommodating the variety of papers of a larger one.